You will find literally hundreds of posts discussing this issue in the forum, going back for years, and some as recent as last week. Just search for either “reliability” or “local processing.”
As @marktheknife says, it’s not about what logical from the consumer’s point of view. Or even the engineer’s. Samsung is making their decisions based on their corporate vision. Your options are to go along with what they offer or to choose one of the many alternatives in the market. You aren’t going to change their minds, as the same arguments about what’s “logical” have been presented to them for several years now.
I’ll bet you a 6 pack that they eventually migrate to a highly localized operation, with the cloud used for other things (integration with other clouds, settings backups etc). All products are consumer-driven. So the more folks posting on this forum about prioritizing local features, the sooner it will happen! It’s not a question of IF, just WHEN…
No, they aren’t. This issue has been discussed at length literally for years. Many of us in the forum are engineers (I myself was a network engineer before ever I bought smartthings) And have discussed all kinds of technical alternatives with people at many different levels in the company, including the SmartThings CEO. They always respond that they would like to see more local processing, but they deliver very little. Their true vision is the Artik cloud.
They do have a new platform design coming soon, again you can read about that in the forum, And one of the big changes is that anyone who wants to write custom code for others to use will now have to provide their own servers rather than using the smartthings cloud for free. So that will reduce a lot of the impact on the Samsung cloud, at least the unpaid impact, but it isn’t being done by providing more local processing.
I know it could be a while, so maybe keep it on ice?
Seriously though, I did get an email from ST about the ST Hub firmware update on the 12th. And local was one of the first points - so they are seeing the light…
Products are consumer driven, but in this case the hardware products that Samsung care about are expensive televisions, refrigerators, and washing machines. And, of course, some mobile phones. They are stripping out features in theIr next IOT iteration, But not going more local.
Remember that they have already said that the vast majority of their customers have fewer than 15 devices and use no custom code whatsoever. The people in this forum are in no way representative of their typical customer.
If you want local operations, you can have it now – – but not from Samsung. Apple’s HomeKit runs everything locally except for voice processing, and even that can be done over cellular. Vera, Homeseer, Insteon, Zipato, and others all operate primarily locally.
SmartThings does not, and nothing in what they have done for the last three years (as opposed to what they have said) indicates that they intend to.
The people in this forum are a drop in the ocean compared to their potential smart television sales. We just aren’t the target market.
Anyway, I’ll shut up now. Everything is already been said many many times. Now we can wait and see what happens.
By the way, if you want to double the bet, i’m in for large pepperoni pizza too. ( i’m going to need something to go with all that beer. )
You are definitely new here. “Local“ is always one of the first points. But it never means what you think it’s going to mean.
In this case, it means they added a few more devices to be officially supported devices which will now be distributed to all hubs As potentially local DTH operations.
But what they didn’t do was change any of the automations that can run local. They didn’t make it so your phone app can talk to the hub locally. They didn’t let you change the mode locally. They didn’t let you run webcore or any custom code locally.
If I’m wrong on any of this I will gladly pay up. But the new App Rules engine released March 1 was just more proof of the direction that they’re going. And the trajectory is not towards local operations.
Sorry dude, I’m gonna have to agree with JD that you have waaaay overstated your case.
Possibly because you’re new to ST as you said, so you haven’t had a chance to read through several years of discussion on this point.
And possibly because you have made the incorrect assumption that whatever is being discussed in this online forum of a few thousand power-users can be extrapolated to Samsung’s target market of hundreds of millions of consumers that are far less tech-savvy and have much simpler home automation needs.
We’ll see - can I put you down for a 6 pack as well? There’s just no question that you end up with a more reliable product the more you localize it - IMO.
Don’t let Samsung brainwash you. They will “get it” in time. Complacency just leads to more ️
I think almost everybody here agrees local is more reliable, often more consumer friendly, generally highly desirable. Like I said, hundreds of posts about this over the last four years.
We’re just talking about our experience with this particular platform from this particular company and the trajectory is that they have set and continue to invest in.
Heck, there’s an entire company Founded by former smartthings power users, which does one thing: create a locally operating IOT platform which can run software developed for smartthings. There are even people who are using that one in addition to smartthings just to get the local piece.
They’re betting their savings, their houses, and their jobs, not just a six pack, that Samsung isn’t going to shift to local anytime soon. And those are some very smart people.
Like I said, I’d be delighted to be wrong on this one. We will see.
LOL, was just thinking the same thing. If @ReedMikel is correct (which I think is very unlikely, in case I haven’t made that clear ), the Hubitat guys are screwed!
Time will tell… If Samsung does not include uptime/reliability in their development priorities, ST will just eventually fade away IMO. I’m sure nobody argues that greater localization equates to improved performance and reliability - it’s really really difficult to come up with any reason to not localize the heck out of ST, or any serious home automation product…
I think I’ll check out Hubitat- just for kicks. Thanks for your well seasoned opinions. I really hope you’re wrong though - I can taste that cold
Just ordered a hub from Hubitat. Since I’m just starting my HA, I might as well check it out too. Read thru some of their community forum posts and see plenty of like-minded people who want the reliability, cloud-independence and speed that local processing offers…
We are not talking interoperability, here. We are talking about competing products and Hubitat is very new, meaning a lot of stuff has not been baked out. This should have been asked at Hubitat’s web site, not SmartThings. Why did I go through the time to answer the question if the person just moved to Hubitat?
Actually, multiple people are using both smartthings and hubitat and smartthings staff have said in this forum that they consider it an add-on, not a direct competitor, because it doesn’t offer the cloud to cloud integrations. And there are specific interoperability options available for it. Choice is good.
Your advice was good advice, regardless of the Z wave controller the person ends up using. And the OP ended up buying the switch you recommended.
My own personal opinion is that good information is helpful even if the person ends up finding that their journey takes them to a different destination than the one they originally envisioned. I think forums like this are an important place to go beyond the marketing hype and look at individual features and Specifications and help people match those to their own priorities and preferences.
A lot of times they find out that smartthings can do way more than they expected, and that’s exciting. Other times they find out that maybe smartthings isn’t the best choice for their particular situation or maybe smartthings alone isn’t enough and they need to add some other options as well.
I think these are all good outcomes and good reasons to come to the forum. And quite different than someone who has never had smartthings, never intends to have smartthings, and wants to ask a question about an entirely different system that doesn’t integrate with smartthings. But to me, that’s just a very different situation than someone who is seriously considering smartthings and trying to see how it fits into their planned project. YMMV, of course.
Because I am new to HA, and want to find the best product for me. Even if it means buying multiple HA systems/hubs… I’m not married to any particular company or hardware, I just want something extremely reliable, with virtually no downtime. I didn’t really do my homework before purchasing my ST Hub by reading thru these forum posts (more cloud downtime than I expected). But, it will be fun to compare the 2 products, right?
. Ice cold please…
They are stripping out features in theIr next IOT iteration, But not going more local.
( i’m going to need something to go with all that beer. )
️
This.
), the Hubitat guys are screwed 
!
